Encyclopedia

A text editor that is widely used for writing GNU/Linux software. It was written by Richard Stallman and released in 1984 as the first "free software" program of the GNU Project. It is an advanced text editor supporting multiple windows that is available for several platforms.

A Collection of Macros
The name comes from the first version of Emacs that Stallman created at MIT in the mid-1970s, called "Editing Macros," which was a set of macros added to the TECO text editor. Numerous versions of Emacs were subsequently created by several people, and the GNU Emacs version is maintained by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, visit www.gnu.org/software/emacs. See GNU Project, GNU/Linux, free software, Free Software Foundation and TECO.